A high percentage of people are required, during some portion of their life, to wear partial dentures which are retained in position in the mouth by support in one form or another to an adjacent natural tooth or between two spaced apart natural teeth. For many years the use of various clasp type devices have been utilized by dentists, such device fitting firmly around adjacent natural teeth. While such devices function satisfactorily, to an extent, they do have disadvantages and limitations. One of the problems with clasp type devices is that in order to securely hold the partial denture in place they must grasp the natural tooth or teeth fairly securely. This means that as they are placed in the mouth or removed strain and stress is placed on the natural tooth or teeth. Of greater significance, clamps engaging a natural tooth tend to cause the tooth to move as the user chews food which, after a length of time, can result in the impairment of the natural tooth by the stress placed upon it by adjacent dentures.
In order to circumvent the disadvantage of clasp type partial dentures others have suggested various types of apparatus for locking the partial dentures into place, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,727,653 and 3,436,825.
This invention provides an improved attachment means for removably supporting a partial denture to a natural tooth and having advantages over other known types of apparatus or means for supporting partial dentures. One of the advantages of the invention is to provision of means whereby the pivotation of the partial denture during chewing can take place around the attachment means with minimum stress and strain on the natural tooth to which the partial denture is supported. Another advantage of the attachment means of this invention is the safety of use obtained in that a positive locking means is achieved for locking a partial denture to a natural tooth, not depending upon springs or tension fits, thus eliminating the chance that the denture can be dislodged while the user is chewing sticky food, such as taffy candy, or while the user is asleep and possibly thereby become accidentally swallowed.
In addition, the attachment means of this invention does not engage the gum tissues around the natural teeth to which it is affixed and thus does not irritate tissue as does some existing types of friction clasping means.
Another advantage of the attachment means of this invention is that it is designed for use interiorly of the partial dentures and thereby is hidden from view from the outside of the mouth for improved appearance of the user. Another advantage is the ease of removing the attachment means when it is desired to remove the partial denture from the mouth.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an improved attachment for removably supporting a partial denture to a natural tooth.
More particularly, it is an object of this invention to provide an attachment for removably supporting a partial denture to an adjacent natural tooth having the advantages and improvements aforementioned.
Still more particularly, an object of this invention is to provide an attachment for removably supporting a partial denture to a natural tooth including a gudgeon member adaptable to be affixed to a natural tooth, the member having a pinhole opening therein, a locking bar having one end adaptable to be pivotally supported to a partial denture, the other end having an extending pin portion which, when pivoted to the closed position, extends within the pinhole in the gudgeon member for locking the partial denture into position.
These and other objects will be fulfilled by the attachment means to now be described in the following specification and claims, taken in conjunction with the attached drawings.